MHSN

wow, that's too much Iran got close to Russia only in past 10-20 years but Khomeini was strongly anti-soviet. actually he was anti everything. their slogan at the start was "No East, No west, only Islamic Republic" I really don't hear that these days. not at all, Khomeini and his friends used some of those communist groups (like any other anti-shah group) to make the revolution happen but after 1979 they arrested and executed most of communist leaders (it was called "Tudeh Party" at the time) even though I have to say some of those groups were as bad as him, MEK (or as I call them the Iranian version of ISIS) killed so many high rank officials, they had so many successful terrorist plans, including killing president Rajaei. those actions actually gave Khomeini more power and excuse to go further and silence all opposition groups. including Soviet-backed parties. I'm not sure why Saddam started the war, I'm still trying to read more about that, but he knew Khomeini is his eternal enemy ( as I said he wanted to murder Khomeini when he was in Iraq) and Iraq was a Shia-majority country. he was probably afraid of Iran. he was also at war with Iran under Shah but they made peace later. after the revolution they destroyed most of the army, arresting and executing most of top army generals, so maybe Saddam saw an opportunity to attack a VERY weakened Iran and he was counting on Iranian-Arabs to support him. people in Southwest of Iran (oil rich provinces) are ethnic Arab but he was wrong and they didn't support him. Saddam invaded few parts of Iran, but then Iran regrouped and after 2 years they kicked Saddam's army out of Iranian lands. but the war didn't stop, Khomeini has a very very famous quota. "The Road to Quds (Jerusalem) passes through Karbala" in his wildest dream he was dreaming the Iraqi Shias supporting him taking religious parts of Iraq. Khomeini never wanted to stop the war, after 6 years finally some politicians managed to convince him that it's useless and since the whole world is somehow supporting Saddam and Iran is running out of everything, and Saddam was starting to use chemical weapons. (thanks to some European countries/companies) Khomeini only accepted the ceasefire because he had no other option, and drunk the "cup of poison" as he said himself. of course there are still lots of secrets about that bloody war we still don't know.

yeah, but to me dates around 1977 to 1988 is like a black hole, you rarely can find information about those days. I mean from reliable sources because as I said earlier everything is biased. yes of course he underestimated Khomeini, he had multiple opportunities to murder him but he didn't, Khomeini was in exile in Iraq for something like 15 years and from what we know now, Saddam Hussein asked for MohammadReza's permission to murder Khomeini few times but he didn't want to do that, mostly because he was religious himself ! killing a grand Ayatollah was crossing the line for him. Shah has a very famous speech on the national TV (or maybe radio) two months before the revolution, there is a famous line "People, I heard your voice of revolution" saying that could save him a year ago but he "heard" the voice when it was too late, he had to flee the country few days after this speech (and never had the chance to come back) his last prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar is one of the people I respect the most, he was jailed by the same Shah but Shah released him from prison only few weeks before the revolution asking him to save everything. he tried to help only because he knew what's going to happen when Khomeini captures the power. but as I said it was too late, Bakhtiar later got murdered brutally in France. I'm not sure if other countries had anything to do with the revolution, they probably just let it happen but it was really people's revolution, Khomeini deceived everybody. it wasn't really an Islamic revolution at the start, there were other groups involved too. Khomeini was charismatic and indeed smart and took advantage of the situation, I recently watched a documentary on Sadegh Ghotbzadeh , he was very very close to Khomeini during the revolution, they were like father and son, he played a huge role, risked his life so many times but then got executed by the same person he was adoring , of course he was really planing for a coup but mostly because there were people like him believing their revolution is being hijacked by the islamists. in fact there is a famous picture, when Khomeini arrived in Tehran (from France) 10 days before the revolution, everybody on that plane risked their lives because it was always possible that Shah Airforce decides to shoot down the plane , what's amazing is nobody in that airplane is in power in Iran right now, they all got jailed, executed, or fled the country. as I said most of these things don't make sense in 2020, I really can't understand most of these comments, decisions, actions etc. the whole war with Iraq doesn't make sense, I know Saddam started the war, but Iran could end it after 2 years, but they fought 6 more years for nothing, Khomeini was still extremely popular when he died, only after his death people started to open their eyes and learn about his true nature. what I never understand is what people were seeing in this man from the first day ?

as much as you want they closed shops, parks, and almost anywhere possible. but if you just want to go out, no restriction for that. YET

Since we have LOTS of free time these days, I decided to read more about the history of Iranian politics. I'm not talking about the million years ago, I mean years around 1979, the Islamic revolution, the problem is it's impossible to find neutral and fair sources, everything is biased. if you listen to IR sources the Shah was a brutal dictator and his SAVAK killed lots of people, the whole "corrupt western world" (and even eastern) was supporting him. Khomeini was an angel falling from the heaven, it was only an "Islamic revolution" and other groups had nothing to do with it (which is in fact a big lie) and if you listen to anti-IR sources Shah was such a nationalistic gentleman but since the "western world" was afraid of him of being the next superpower, they plotted against him, they "made" Khomeini ! and BBC played a big role they still call it Ayatollah BBC, (if you don't believe me, just google that, you will be surprised ) ---------------- recently I got my hands on some old newspapers, reading them is a very interesting experience for me, most of those comments and interviews at 1980s sounds extremely stupid and unbelievable right now in 2020 but the reason why I brought this up is a sport-related reason, it was always my question why exactly Iran boycotted two Olympics in a row. both Moscow and Los Angeles. today I found a newspaper from 1984, statement from the Iranian prime minister at the time about boycotting the games, I'm going to translate the most important part: Because USA continues to meddle in middle east countries affairs, specially USA government's support for the "Zionist regime" and because of the crimes they are committing in Latin American countries specially El Salvador !!! The Cabinet decides that our athletes don't participate ... really, El Salvador ?

Iran had the record number of more than 2200 positive cases today. but they say that's only because they are improving the testing capability, beside that the situation is still the same, the number of deaths is still around something between 120-150 per day I think right now the only country not in lockdown is Iran even though we are slowly going to that direction, there will be more restriction starting from tomorrow, they are just wasting time. a complete lockdown is inevitable eventually, we can't keep the numbers "steady" forever.

actually Moradi is not the only top Iranian athlete recovering from a surgery, Hassan Yazdani (Olympic Champion and probably our best athlete right now) is in the same situation, I can add Hamideh Abbasali to the list , people who followed Karate qualification probably remember what happened to her ACL a month ago in Salzburg. she is probably the only Iranian female athlete with a very good chance to win medal (even gold medal) in Tokyo. I was thinking and except some of our basketball players, none of our top athletes were supposed to retire after Tokyo, and the majority of them are young, so at least it doesn't hurt Iran (I mean only from this point of view, of course the virus hurt everybody)

only young athletes ? because I can name Sohrab Moradi, he is still recovering from a surgery and one more year will give him a better chance to reach his max records. even though he is also getting older and beside that he still has to "qualify" and we have to wait to see the modified qualification rules. but one athlete I can name is Amir Hossein Zare in wrestling, he is 19 and he beat several world medalists already (including world champion Geno Petriashvili) but I think he needs 1 or 2 more years to become world #1. also I can name that Russian kid Kurban Shiraev I think he will beat world champion Gazhimurad Rashidov next year to be Russia's representative in Tokyo

I didn't mean summer obviously, maybe in December or November, even though I know that's unlikely/impossible. at least I hope they don't cancel 2021 World Championships, just reschedule them. it's hard to qualify for the Olympics and there are some non-Olympic events, therefore cancelling the 2021 Worlds means two years without Worlds/Olympics for so many athletes

I wonder if it's possible to have "World Championship" in some of those sports later in 2020. (unlikely I know) for example in wrestling there is no WCh scheduled in Olympic year of 2020, if they postpone the Olympics to 2021 I think that will cancel the 2021 World Championships in sports like wrestling

I think the officiating was OK in that match, Ghasemi was passive and deserved those cautions, actually nobody expected him to even win a silver, Akgul was huge huge favorite against him. beating Petriashvili was already a huge achievement, well Dlagnev got injured in his QF match, if you watch his SF with Ghasemi, it was also the same story, in something like 30 seconds, that was stupid of Dlagnev to wrestle despite the injury and make himself looks like a fool

I'm surprised that I couldn't remember that match at all and had to watch it again ! no I don't think that was correct, even though they changed the rules something like 1000 times since then, right now they don't award points at all for situation like that but maybe in 2016 they were too kind to award points easier, but Cox was never in total control, even for a moment to deserves those points, so to me that was a wrong call

Health ministry here said from today they are not going to announce the number of infected/deaths province by province, it will be only the total number, because they think those numbers gave some people wrong idea about some places are "safer" and therefore we have lots of travels to those cities ! according to health ministry ,nowhere is actually "safe" some provinces are reporting less numbers mostly because they are not doing a good job testing people. personally I think this is a terrible idea, I prefer to know the situation in my town, I understand why a complete lockdown is not possible here, but still they can block the roads, that's what they were supposed to do 2 weeks ago. but only happened for few cities. according to officials, 8.5 million people traveled outside of their town in new year holidays (in past 5 days) while at least the numbers were steady here in past 10 days we are expected to see a new wave of coronavirus in next 2 weeks. and with more doctors and nurses are getting infected themselves and hospitals are still full with current patients, things don't look good.

crore means 10 millions,

This is really scary that we have to consider 651 deaths as good. but hopefully the number continues to drop, to zero eventually

This disaster started in Iran and Italy almost at the same time, (probably a bit sooner in Iran) and both countries have almost the same population and the numbers were more or less the same until few days ago , since then it's increasing in a very scary way in Italy while they are steady here ! for this reason I see so many people here question the numbers coming out of health ministry, even though I still see no reason for coverup while every minute you see someone on TV begging people to stay at home and telling people a catastrophe is awaiting for us if people don't listen, but I also can't find a reason explaining this. because I'm 100% sure the Iranian government didn't handle it better than the Italians, that's simply impossible. it's just hard to be worse than officials here. I also know our health system and our doctors are probably the best in the region but still not better than Europe. so the question remains, if we believe the numbers, what's the reason ? actually I'm not talking about the number of infected people. that's somehow irrelevant, countries have different policies, in some places they test everybody, but for example in Iran, the number of test they can do per day is limited. therefore they don't test everybody. I'm mostly talking about the number of deaths. I know we have a younger population, probably much younger, but is that enough to explain this huge difference ?

as you said middle east conflicts are usually endless. but this one between Russia and Turkey is complicated, it's mostly between Assad troops and Turkey. Russia is not directly involved. I think Putin and Erdogan met few weeks ago and solved their problems. Putin got what he wanted from Syria, he doesn't care if Turkey invades some lands inside Syrian borders. that's only Assad's problem.

I know few people in Tajikistan, they closed all borders from the first day and didn't let even a dog in without 14 days mandatory quarantine. not completely sure about Turkmenistan but I think they also did the same. they gave up hosting Asian Futsal Championship weeks before other countries even imagine about not hosting . but both countries have "presidents" for life so you never can be sure about anything. Emomali Rahman is ruling Tajikistan for a very long time, longer than life of most of Totallympics users Syria probably did 0 tests so far, so I guess having 0 positive result is 100% accurate . if the virus finds its way into those refugee camps it will be catastrophic and I think it's just matter of time.

They arrested those guys actually for disrespecting holy places lol but I think that was Mashhad in Northeast, not Qom. that was disgusting though. now we know the virus is spread hugely because of those stupid religious gatherings. and the government acted very late to shut down all those places. they are closed now but a bit late. maybe because the majority of news about in Iran are not in English the health ministry has a press conference everyday at 14:00 and announces the numbers. and there are tons of information about the situation in every single province, of course some people always question anything comes from Iranian government because of their bad reputation.

for scientists of course. I mean for other people my point is when you are trapped at home for a month with nothing to do, nothing to watch, when you hear at least 100 people dying everyday in your country, some of them in your own town (and I know it's even worse in some other places), you start not caring about the origin, you just want your life back to normal

So you are in this phase to ask questions like that. I remember people asking questions like this here 3 weeks ago but I can't see that anymore. right now it doesn't matter what's the origin of this virus. but we are in a new phase "fuck it, enough self-quarantine for me, let's go have fun"

yes being a top Chinese table tennis player is just the start and you have to go through hell to be selected (even though that automatically means an Olympic medal at least) but I was talking about sports that award quotas based on world ranking. in TT it's up to NOCs to pick their own team.

of course it doesn't matter for Iran, actually I'm glad Ganjzadeh made it. he has more chance for the gold medal than Poursheib. I really really feel sorry for Poursheib , I know he sacrificed a lot to be in Tokyo, but I always preferred Ganjzadeh. yes having another K1 event most probably wouldn't change much for Poursheib and that's not the point, he didn't even mention that in his long post. he is more upset about the rules favoring Ganjzadeh over him despite having less points. he is hugely disappointed because they didn't know having more points won't be enough for him. they only found out about it when he surpassed Ganjzadeh in the ranking but WKF ranking was still showing Ganjzadeh in green. WKF should mentioned it very clearly in its official qualification rule but they didn't predict such a rare situation. and I don't think there are "many many more" athletes who are 2nd in Olympic Ranking and still doesn't qualify for the olympics. (I'm talking about sports with qualification based on the ranking) this is very very rare where top 2 are from the same country. I know it happened at men's 58kg taekwondo but can't remember another example in any other sports. Poursheib is very upset because he is not even behind another Iranian in the WR. my point is I think Poursheib deserved it more because he had more points even though I still think Ganjzadeh is a better option.

Spain and UK are way past "tracking people" I think we can say the same about almost all other countries. only China was able of tracking everybody.

I have a question, Why the death rate is very low in Germany ? because they test everybody like South Korea or there is another special reason ?

I was reading the news and this one was huge World Pencak Silat Championships in Malaysia is now postponed for 4 months damn you Corona